(This was originally posted Jan 21, 2013 and the documentary was on my old [defunct] MRCTV account)
FULL MOVIE, one of my favorite Michael Moore responses from back in the day (2004).
(I cry every time I watch the beginning of this, the opener is here: https://tinyurl.com/yrhk6y84) This footage is a great example of how Democrats are joined at the hip with radicals. Again, this is one of my favorite documentaries, and while I doubt any of these have sold in years, get one, you won’t be disappointed (AMAZON). Citizens United Political Victory Fund’s (“CUPVF”)
This December 2004 comment from Amazon is a great intro to the video:
The vicious 2004 Presidential election is evidence of how deeply divided our nation is. The divide goes far deeper than Democrat/Republican or Liberal/Conservative. The divide goes deep into the hearts of all Americans. For over a generation now, our schools have taught that right and wrong is determined by each individual, that you should not let anyone tell you what is right or wrong for you. This has had a disastrous impact on our national soul. Because of this we have people like Michael Moore making films with no concern for truth or accuracy. In Mr. Moore’s eyes, the truth is not important. He truly hates America and he hates George Bush because Pres. Bush has the audacity to love our nation and to believe that all people on Earth should have a chance to be free. Celsius 411 and FahrenHYPE 9/11 were made as an answer to Mr. Moore, and to put forth the real story, if anyone really cares to seek out the truth. In the Bible, when life was good for God’s chosen people, they valued their possessions more than God and turned away from Him. The Bible says then “every man did what was right in his own eyes”. Which is to say they determined their own morality instead of following God’s law. This resulted in God’s punishment and great sorrow, which would then bring them back to the Lord, which then led to His blessings and then the cycle started again. Half of Americans still believe and look to God for guidance. In the other half, every man is doing what is right in his own eyes. This my fellow citizens is the root of our divide. As the numbers in the first group dwindle, the fabric of our society is further torn. How long until…
A young co-worker and another coworking compatriot asked if I thought there was life elsewhere in the universe. Being me, I just cannot say no, so I explained the idea in conversational form (while getting stuff ready for my run) the following: “Scientific and Anecdotal Evidence for the Beginning of the Universe.”
Albert Einstein developed his general theory of relativity in 1915;
Around the same time evidence of an expanding universe was being presented to the American Astronomical Society by Vesto Slipher;
In the 1920s using Einstein’s theory, a Russian mathematician (Alexander Friedman) and the Belgium astronomer (George Lemaitre) predicted the universe was expanding;
In 1929, Hubble discovered evidence confirming earlier work on the Red-Light shift showing that galaxies are moving away from us;
In the 1940’s, George Gamow predicted a particular temperature to the universe if the Big Bang happened;
In 1965, two scientists (Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson) discovered the universe’s background radiation — and it was only about 3.7 degrees above absolute zero.
After explaining quickly the ideas therein, and noting that the Greeks, Sumerians, Hindus, Buddhists, Janists, etc-etc, in fact, all the world religions and various worldviews — save theism — posit some sort of eternal nature.
BREAK: DEFINING A WORLDVIEW For those that have never heard of something they express (often illogically and in parts)
A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our well being. — James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004), 122.
The German word is Weltanschauung, meaning a ‘world and life view,’ or ‘a paradigm.’ It is a framework through which or by which one makes sense of the data of life. A worldview makes a world of difference in one’s view of God, origins, evil, human nature, values, and destiny” — Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999], 785-786.
A worldview consists of a series of assumptions/presuppositions that a person holds about reality. A worldview, consciously or subconsciously, affects the way a person evaluates every aspect of reality. Every person adheres to some sort of worldview, although one person may not be as consciously aware of it as another person. These presuppositions affect the thinking of every person in the world. It logically follows that the way a person thinks affects what a person does. — Biblical Archaeology
People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By “presuppositions” we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People’s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions. “As a man thinketh, so he is,” is really profound. An individual is not just the product of the forces around him. He has a mind, an inner world. Then, having thought, a person can bring forth actions into the external world and thus influence it. People are apt to look at the outer theater of action, forgetting the actor who “lives in the mind” and who therefore is the true actor in the external world. The inner thought world determines the outward action. Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles. But people with more understanding realize that their presuppositions should be chosen after a careful consideration of what worldview is true. When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, “not many men are in the room” — that is, although worldviews have many variations, there are not many basic worldviews or presuppositions. — Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1976), 19-20.
The only religious text that posits creation ex nihilo [creation from nothing] confirming the latest discoveries of science from Einstein’s theory of relativity to now is the Hebraic Bible [specifically, Genesis — the Bible]. as part of this discussion I noted quickly the just over 10,000 religions in the world fall into just 7-categories/worldviews at most — and stressed again that only theism predicting modern scientific discovery…
QUOTE BREAK FOR MY READERS
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
— Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1992), 107 | [Additional bio info] Dr. Jastrow ( 1925–2008) became the founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and served as its director until his retirement from NASA in 1981. Concurrently he was a professor of Geophysics at Columbia University. Jastrow became the first chairman of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Committee, which established the scientific goals for the exploration of the moon during the Apollo lunar landings. In 1981 Jastrow left NASA to join the faculty of Dartmouth College as professor of Earth Sciences. He left Dartmouth in 1992 to take up duties as director and chairman of the Mount Wilson Institute, managing the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Dr. Jastrow was an agnostic, not a Christian.
END
…and along with philosophy, history, and science [noted in the convo], I do not believe in alien life. In fact, I am informed of other lifeforms, angels.
The young lady involved in the conversation after I noted “I could have just said ‘no’ to the question” thanked me for the thorough response. Which was very kind of her. I then noted that I wish many other people in my sub-group, Christians, could also respond in similar fashion… the quote I always have in mind about this I texted to the young man while in bumper-to-bumper traffic on my way to deliver product:
TEXT
After reading many books on extraterrestrial encounters, ghosts, spirit mediums, and demons, I do believe there is interdimensional life. There is more evidence for that, and less blind faith that is required to say “life is possible somewhere” in the material universe. BTW, one of my favorite quotes (talking about faith vs informed faith):
“I suspect that most of the individuals who have religious faith are content with blind faith. They feel no obligation to understand what they believe. They may even wish not to have their beliefs disturbed by thought. But if God in whom they believe created them with intellectual and rational powers, that imposes upon them the duty to try to understand the creed of their religion. Not to do so is to verge on superstition.”
Morimer J. Adler, [chapter titled] “A Philosopher’s Religious Faith,” in, Kelly James Clark, ed., Philosophers Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 207. | [Additional bio info] Dr. Adler (1902-2001) was Chairman and Cofounder with Max Weismann of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas and Editor in Chief of its journal Philosophy is Everybody’s Business, co-founder and director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, Chairman of the Board of Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, Editor in Chief of the Great Books of the Western World and The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Editor of The Great Ideas Today (all published by Encyclopedia Britannica), Co-Founder and Honorary Trustee of The Aspen Institute, past Instructor at Columbia University, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago (1930-52).
In other words, my worldview supported by evidence, negates such beliefs.
All this being said, I sometimes feel like the guy explaining stuff in this funny meme:
At the end of this post I will include the entire “Privileged Planet” documentary… it will expand the thinking of just how improbable another planet exists that can support life. As well as other media.
…According to a team of researchers at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, it’s because we’ve been using the wrong factors in the Drake Equation. We – including usually hard-nosed scientists – want so badly for there to be LGM, we’ve been grossly overestimating the values of Drake’s factors, resulting in a flagrant overestimation of the number of civilizations that should exist out there.
When the Oxford folks assign realistic numerical values to the seven factors – based on an honest evaluation of the uncertainties in our very best chemical, biological, physical, and astronomical knowledge – Frank’s famous equation predicts a much, much, much smaller number than 1,000 – 100,000,000 intelligent civilizations per galaxy. The median number plummets to something as low as 0.00000000000000000000000000000000008 (that’s an eight preceded by thirty-four zeroes).
In plain English, explain the authors in a paper submitted to the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, “we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe.” If any LGM do exist out there somewhere, the researchers conclude, it is somewhere over the rainbow, so to speak – “quite possibly beyond the cosmological horizon and forever unreachable.”
So, next time you look up at the night sky and say to yourself, “There has to be someone out there!” think again. Even though it sounds like a possibility more fantastic than the Tooth Fairy, science itself is presently telling us we are very likely it – the only intelligent creatures inhabiting this immense and incredible universe.
….Sandberg, Drexler and Ord use a different approach in their modelling, incorporating current scientific uncertainties that produce values for different parts of the equation ranging over tens and hundreds of orders of magnitude. Some of these concern critical questions regarding the emergence of life from non-living material – a process known as abiogenesis – and the subsequent likelihoods of early RNA-like life evolving into more adaptive DNA-like life.
Then there is the essential matter of that primitive DNA-like life undergoing the sort of evolutionary symbiotic development that occurred on Earth, when a relationship between two different types of simple organisms resulted in the complex “eukaryotic” cells that constitute every species on the planet more complicated than bacteria.
The results are depressing enough to send a thousand science-fiction writers into catatonic shock. The Fermi Paradox, they find, dissolves.
“When we take account of realistic uncertainty, replacing point estimates by probability distributions that reflect current scientific understanding, we find no reason to be highly confident that the galaxy (or observable universe) contains other civilizations,” they conclude.
“When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe.
“‘Where are they?’ — probably extremely far away, and quite possibly beyond the cosmological horizon and forever unreachable.”
And the NEW YORK POST wrote on the OXFORD study as well:
…..Researchers at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute came to the conclusion that humans are alone in the universe while examining the so-called “Fermi Paradox” — which ponders why scientists believe in extraterrestrials despite having zero proof.
“We find a substantial probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it,” researchers say in the report, published in the online journal Arxiv.org earlier this month.
There’s likely no intelligent life outside of Earth — so there’s no need to waste time theorizing about humanity’s relationship with aliens, notes the paper, dubbed “Dissolving the Fermi Paradox.”
The paradox, named after physicist Enrico Fermi, questions how there could be “a high probability” of extraterrestrial life when there’s no solid proof.
“Where is everyone?” Fermi asked in the 1950s while pondering the possibility of interstellar travel.
Past scientific theories have said alien civilizations may be living in our galaxy based on seven factors — including the position of star formations and how long creatures are able to survive.
But Oxford researchers Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler and Toby Ord say the simplest solution is likely the truth: There’s no one else out there……
So What Of Alien Abductions?
So, after years of reading books and studying eyewitness encounters and watching TV specials on spirit mediums, alien abductions, past lives, the occult, new age, automatic writing, altered states of consciousness, and hauntings (and more)… the messages and encounters in all these different mediums have a common thread. And since my worldview is informed by the Judeo-Christian God and Scripture… I can come to only one conclusion…. which follows:
Please keep in mind this documentary was made in the 80’s. It has spooky music and is very much dated… the “disclaimer” below it applies as well. All that said, there are some great points made that are still relevant, and most importantly, true.
Take note I do not endorse everything noted in this documentary or the articles, but the similarity between alien encounters, spiritism (like mediums), ghosts, the occult, and the like, is the important issue here ~ NOT “government conspiracies” or the like.
While this documentary is dated, the DVD for purchase (I did edit it a bit), and HERE.
Two decent articles on the issue of UFOs and the Christian worldview, are as follows:
A note from my Facebook about this and my other post:
I posted two older documentaries (they are from the 80’s, so expect the pat narrator and eerie music) and some links of my own thoughts on the matter.
These two posts give a theistic-Christian interpretation to UFOs, ghosts, spirit mediums, and the like. You can break the world’s 10,000 religious beliefs down to a handful of worldviews and each worldview has a distinct interpretation of the evidence. So if you are a Christian, you cannot believe a ghost is a departed love one or a soul lost and wandering the earth (Hebrews 9:27[note]).
So what is the explanation for these apparent metaphysical encounters?
Well, you will have to see and watch for yourself:
[Note] Mind you, it seems clear that before their real conversion to the idea of who Jesus was (God Almighty), the Disciple also believed in ghosts (https://carm.org/did-the-disciples-of-Jesus-believe-in-ghosts).
So I am not saying the person who does believe in these things are retarded or dumb. All I am saying is in the Christian worldview these interpretations do not fit the evidence. I would challenge the believer to mature in their understanding of what their view says and how believing in ghosts being departed people, ETs that posses people, etc,…
…are borrowing from other worldviews and cutting-n-tapping it into the worldview of Christianity.
The Culting of America, by Ron Rhodes (especially chapter 12)
Alien Obsession: What Lies Behind Abductions, Sightings, and the Attraction to the Paranormal, by Ron Rhodes
Dictionary of Cults, Sects, Religioons and the Occult, by Mather and Nichols
Occult Invasion: The Subtle Seduction of the World & the Church, by Dave Hunt
Biblical Demonology: A Study of Spiritual Forces at Work Today, by Merrill F. Unger
Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs, by Ankerberg and Weldon
The Facts on the New Age Movement, Ankerberg and Weldon
Occult ABC, by Kurt Koch
Christian Counseling & Occultism, by Kurt Koch
Occult Bondage and Deliverance, by Kurt Koch
Demonology, Past & Present, by Kurt Koch
Handbook of Today’s Religions, by McDowell and Stewart
The Occult Shock and Psychic Forces, Wilson and Weldon
Cults: And the Occult, by Edmond Gruss
The Ouija Board: A Doorway to the Occult, by Edmund Gruss
Ouija: The Most Dangerous Game, by Stoker Hunt
The Beautiful Side of Evil, by Johanna Michaelsen
The Occult Roots of Nazism, by Nicholas Goodrick
Witchcraft: Exploring the World of Wicca, by Craig Hawkins
UFO’s and the Alien Agenda: Uncovering the Mystery Behind UFO’s and the Paranormal, by Bob Larson
Encounters with UFO’s, by Weldon and Levitt
UFOs in the New Age: Extraterrestrial Messages & the Truth of Scripture, by William Alnor
UFO Cults & the New Millennium, by William Alnor
Alien Encounters: The Secret Behind the UFO Phenomenon, by Missler and Eastman
The New Age Cult, by Walter Martin
Beware! Deception & Delusion in the Church, by Bill Rudge
Non Christian
Communion: A True Story: Encounters with the Unknown, by Whitley Strieber
The Unexplained, by Allen Spraggett
Mediums, Mystics and the Occult, by Milbourne Christopher
Ghosts Among Us: True Stories of Spirit Encounters, by Leslie Rule
Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism, by Thomas B. Allen
Thirty Years Among the Dead: Historic Studies in Spiritualism; A Psychiatrist’s Investigation of Spirit Mediums and Psychic Possession in his Patients, by Carl August Wickland
Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1, by Neale Donald Walsch
A Course in Miracles, by Helen Schucman
The Urantia Book: Revealing the Mysteries of God, the Universe, World History, Jesus, and Ourselves, “Multiple” authors
PRIVILEGED PLANET
Video Description
For centuries scientists and philosophers have marveled at an eerie coincidence. Mathematics, a creation of human reason, can predict the nature of the universe, a fact physicist Eugene Wigner referred to as the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences.” In the last three decades astronomers and cosmologists have noticed another, seemingly unrelated, mystery. Contrary to all expectations, the laws of physics seem precisely “fine-tuned” for the existence of complex life.
Could these two wonders actually be isolated pieces of a wider pattern? Both are prerequisites for science, yet what about the process of scientific discovery itself? What are its necessary conditions? Why is it even possible? Read any book on the history of science, and you’ll learn about magnificent tales of human ingenuity, persistence, and dumb luck. But that’s only part of the story, and not even the most important part. Our location is much more critical to science than it is to real estate. For some reason our Earthly location is extraordinarily well suited to allow us to peer into the heavens and discover its secrets.
Elsewhere, you might learn that Earth and its local environment provide a delicate, and probably exceedingly rare, cradle for complex life. But there’s another, even more startling, fact, described in The Privileged Planet: those same rare conditions that produce a habitable planet-that allow for the existence of complex observers like ourselves-also provide the best overall place for observing. What does this mean? At the least, it turns our view of the universe inside out. The universe is not “pointless” (Steven Weinberg), Earth merely “a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark,” (Carl Sagan) and human existence “just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents” (Steven Weinberg). On the contrary, the evidence we can uncover from our Earthly home points to a universe that is designed for life, and designed for discovery.
PRIVILEGED LIFE
This is an old podcast of Dr. Norman Geisler discussing ex-atheist Antony Flew’s book that detailed his leaving atheism. Here is a “Flewism”
“My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato’s Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads.” After chewing on his scientific worldview for more than five decades, Flew concluded, “A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.” Previously, in his central work, The Presumption of Atheism (1976), Flew argued that the “onus of proof [of God] must lie upon the theist.” However, at the age of 81, Flew shocked the world when he renounced his atheism because “the argument for Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.” (See my DNA post: RNA/DNA = Information | Or, What “IS” Information)
Flew’s God was: immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, omniscient, whole [one, or indivisible, perfectly good and necessary exists].
I call Dr. Flew the long-time “Pope of atheism.” He was the “go-to” guy… until his move to deism in 2004. He was a British philosopher belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, he is notable for his works on the philosophy of religion. Flew was a strong advocate of atheism, arguing that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. He has also criticised the idea of life after death, the free will defense to the problem of evil, and the meaningfulness of the concept of God. However, in 2004 he stated an allegiance to deism, and later wrote the book There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, with contributions from Roy Abraham Varghese. Dr. Flew’s God sounded a lot like the theistic God apologist Dr. William Lane Craig describes:
What properties must such a cause of the universe possess? By the very nature of the case, the cause of space and time must transcend space and time and therefore exist timelessly and nonspatially (at least without the universe). This transcendent cause must therefore be changeless and immaterial, since anything that is timeless must also be unchanging, and anything that is changeless must be nonphysical and immaterial (since material things are constantly changing at the molecular and atomic levels). Such an entity must be beginningless and uncaused, at least in the sense of lacking any prior causal conditions, since there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. Ockham’s razor—the principle which states that we should not multiply causes beyond necessity—will shave away any other causes, since only one cause is required to explain the effect. This entity must be unimaginably powerful, if not omnipotent, since it created the universe without any material cause.
Finally, and most remarkably, such a transcendent first cause is plausibly personal. Two reasons can be given for this conclusion. First, the personhood of the first cause of the universe is implied by its timelessness and immateriality. The only entities which can possess such properties are either minds or abstract objects, like numbers. But abstract objects don’t stand in causal relations. The number 7, for example, can’t cause anything. Therefore, the transcendent cause of the origin of the universe must be an unembodied mind.
Second, this same conclusion is implied by the origin of an effect with a beginning from a beginningless cause. We’ve concluded that the beginning of the universe was the effect of a first cause. By the nature of the case, that cause cannot have either a beginning of its existence or any prior cause. It just exists changelessly without beginning, and a finite time ago it brought the universe into existence. Now this is exceedingly odd. The cause is in some sense eternal and yet the effect which it produced is not eternal but began to exist a finite time ago. How can this be? If the necessary and sufficient conditions for the effect are eternal, then why isn’t the effect also eternal? How can the cause exist without the effect?
There seems to be only one way out of this dilemma, and that is to say that the cause of the universe’s beginning is a personal agent who freely chooses to create a universe in time. Philosophers call this type of causation “agent causation,” and because the agent is free, he can initiate new effects by freely bringing about conditions which were not previously present. Thus, a finite time ago a Creator endowed with free will could have freely brought the world into being at that moment. In this way, the Creator could exist changelessly and eternally but freely create the world in time. By exercising his causal power, he brings it about that a world with a beginning comes to exist? So the cause is eternal, but the effect is not. In this way, then, it is possible for the temporal universe to have come to exist from an eternal cause: through the free will of a personal Creator.
We may therefore conclude that a personal Creator of the universe exists, who is uncaused, beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and unimaginably powerful.
William Lane Craig and Chad Meister, God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Reasonable and Responsible (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 16-17.
Here is another video explaining the impossibility of life even in the time allotted by evolution (video description to follow):
This is a combining of two videos into one to strengthen the points made in them… as well as to preserve them for future use.
FIRST VIDEO[split in two]: “Stephen Meyer Critiques Richard Dawkins’s ‘Mount Improbable’ Illustration” (YouTube)
SECOND VIDEO[tucked between the above]: “Origin: Probability of a Single Protein Forming by Chance” (YouTube)
Other posts related to this on my site:
Not Enough Evolutionary Time For Simple Life (RPT)
RNA/DNA < Information | Or, What “IS” Information (RPT)
The Two Books of Faith – Nature and Revelatory (50+ Evidences) (RPT)
Reasons Why The 2020 Presidential Election Is Deeply Puzzling: If Only Cranks Find the Tabulations Strange, Put Me Down As A Crank(SPECTATOR)
5 More Ways Joe Biden Magically Outperformed Election Norms: Surely The Journalist Class Should Be Intrigued By The Historic Implausibility Of Joe Biden’s Victory. That They Are Not Is Curious, To Say The Least(THE FEDERALIST)
What Would It Take to Convince You The Election Was Rigged? (STREAM)
Legitimacy Of Biden Win Buried By Objective Data: Emerging Information From The States Render His Victory Less And Less Plausible(AMERICAN SPECTATOR)
EXCLUSIVE: Peter Navarro Expands Election Fraud Memo, Number Of Illegal Ballots Dwarf Biden Victory Margin By Over Two (Peter Navarro released an exclusive update to his “Immaculate Deception” – NATIONAL PULSE)
A Simple Test for the extent of Vote Fraud with Absentee Ballots in the 2020 Presidential Election: Georgia and Pennsylvania Data. John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D. (Revised December 21, 2020) (SCRIBD)
NATIONAL FILE has a recent story about Georgia’s move towards sanity:
A report coming out of the Georgia State Senate concludes that illegal activity took place on Nov. 3 contrary to what Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger insists
A new report from the Georgia State Senate’s Election Law Study Subcommittee found evidence of illegal activity executed by election workers at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta on November 3 and 4, 2020.
The Georgia Election Law Study Subcommittee is a subcommittee of the Georgia State Senate Judiciary Committee. Subcommittee Chairman, William Ligon (R), said the draft report has not been formally approved by either the subcommittee or the Judicial Committee.
“The events at the State Farm Arena are particularly disturbing because they demonstrated intent on the part of election workers to exclude the public from viewing the counting of ballots, an intentional disregard for the law. The number of votes that could have been counted in that length of time was sufficient to change the results of the presidential election and the senatorial contests,” the report reads.
“Furthermore, there appears to be coordinated illegal activities by election workers themselves who purposely placed fraudulent ballots into the final election totals.”
[….]
The subcommittee’s report acknowledged that a plethora of witnesses and experts testified about irregularities and fraud allegations during a public hearing earlier this month.
In summary, the legislators on the subcommittee wrote, the General Election “was chaotic and any reported results must be viewed as untrustworthy.”
ARIZONA
JUST THE NEWS as well has a promising move coming from Arizona:
The Republican party of Arizona announced on Monday that the state’s GOP electors will intervene in the case between Maricopa County and the Arizona state legislature over access to the county’s voting machines.
Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona GOP, announced on Monday that the Maricopa County board of supervisors is refusing to comply with a legislative subpoena from the State Senate Judiciary Committee that requires the board to conduct an audit of the county’s Dominion Voting Systems machines to determine the legitimacy of the outcome of last month’s presidential election.
Instead of complying, the board of supervisors is suing the senate committee to avoid handing over the subpoenaed materials and machinery. The board, in its suit, argues that they cannot conduct a forensic audit of the voting machines because they are entangled in litigation (of their own making).
The board also argues that an audit would jeopardize the secrecy of the ballots from electors. Ward however, said, “There is nothing that stops them from doing the audit.”
The Arizona Republicans are now moving to intervene in the case in an effort to ensure the forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems machines takes place.
“We are entering into this case,” said Ward. Lawyers for Maricopa County have, according to Ward, accused the Senate Judiciary Committee “of just wanting to get this data so that they can give it to us (the Arizona GOP).”
The purpose of the legal intervention from the Arizona Republicans is to ensure that the State Senate Judiciary Committee’s legislative subpoena is followed by the Maricopa County board. “We are doing everything possible to stop the steal, to maintain election integrity, and to force honesty into this process,” said Ward……
WISCONSIN
AND, out of Wisconsin comes news about an upper court win for Trump — DAVID HARRIS JR.
President Trump finally won one in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Of course, the media is concentrating on the case he lost. In that case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to throw out 221,000 votes.
A victory would have won the state for Trump who is only behind by a little over 20,000 votes.
According to far-left Washington Post:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s lawsuit attempting to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the battleground state, ending Trump’s legal challenges in state court about an hour before the Electoral College was to meet to cast the state’s 10 votes for Biden.
The ruling came after the court held arguments Saturday, the same day a federal judge dismissed another Trump lawsuit seeking to overturn his loss in the state. Trump appealed that ruling.
Trump sought to have more than 221,000 ballots disqualified in Dane and Milwaukee counties, the state’s two most heavily Democratic counties. He wanted to disqualify absentee ballots cast early and in-person, saying there wasn’t a proper written request made for the ballots; absentee ballots cast by people who claimed “indefinitely confined” status; absentee ballots collected by poll workers at Madison parks; and absentee ballots where clerks filled in missing information on ballot envelopes.
But it is the second ruling that could give Wisconsin to Trump provided the Democrats allow the Republicans to see the ballots and challenge them. These 215,000 ballots are from people who are allegedly “indefinitely confined.”….
UNCLE TOM is the best political documentary I have seen since INDOCTRINATE U… and yes, I watched No Safe Spaces. That was largely a dud in my mind. Why? It really didn’t introduce me to others to allow for the growth ideas and viewpoints or perspectives to make a stronger conservative case. Indoctrinate U introduced me to Carol Swain, John McWhorter, and others. (My 2-cents)
Here Larry Elder covers some of the reviews of the film:
(MOONBATTERY hat-tip) Ami Horowitz investigated the mother of many Islamic terror groups, the umbrella group known as the Muslim Brotherhood, and unsurprisingly found that it is devoted to the imposition of a global caliphate. This sinister organization has already established a secure beachhead in the USA.
In a great example of how the media guides it’s listeners down a path full of narratives they [said media] wish were true… we find in a touted “honest” Clinton documentary many lies and missteps (Clinton | American Experience). Larry Elder is in his element here as he excoriates the depths of this false narrative. His article is a must read for those interested in this. Near the back-half of the audio Larry offers other media silence on issues surrounding Democrats. They [Democrats] apparently have a no fly zone in regard to honest reporting.
Just goes to show that you can take a voice over from a documentary about mental illness and put it over the top of libtards doing their thing and it fits just perfectly.
“Building the Machine” introduces the public to the Common Core States Standards Initiative (CCSSI) and its effects on our children’s education. The documentary compiles interviews from leading educational experts, including members of the Common Core Validation Committee. Parents, officials, and the American public should be involved in this national decision regardless of their political persuasion.
WHAT IS THE COMMON CORE?
The Common Core is the largest systemic reform of American public education in recent history. What started as a collaboration between the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to reevaluate and nationalize America’s education standards has become one of the most controversial—and yet, unheard of—issues in the American public.
In 2010, 45 states adopted the Common Core, but according to a May 2013 Gallup Poll, 62% of Americans said they had never heard of the Common Core. Prominent groups and public figures have broken traditional party lines over the issue, leaving many wondering where they should stand.
I will, in the future, post something on Big Pharma. But for now, this will deal with Big Ag.
I got to see a friend I haven’t in a long time. We hung out for a few hours, had a couple of beers, I made some burgers on the grill, enjoyed our 80[+] degree weather we had in SoCal. During our time together, he mentioned a documentary, Food Inc., then mentioned another about “Big Pharma.” I was surprised he didn’t refer to “Big Ag,” for corporate agriculture, but I digress. I mentioned that he was using LANGUAGE only someone who was liberal would use (no conservative that knows his/her hill o’ beans talks like that… to wit… he denied being political at all. Which is an interesting point. I mentioned to him that while HE may not be “political,” he was using POLITICAL language encapsulated by the left.
It doesn’t matter that he considers himself a-political, he is using the lenses supplied him by pop-culture to view the world, and it is one that is modeled after liberalism. He is jaundiced, whether he realizes it or not. While the following deals with specifically the Christian worldview, it can be imported into the political realm:
A personal philosophy/religious belief determines one’s world view. That world view influences their actions, actions create habits; habits establish traditions and those traditions eventually become a culture. Have you wondered how that two different scientists with identical credentials can look at the same empirical data and have two very different conclusions? Here’s why. A scientist that does not believe in a creator-God (Atheist) looks at the similarities of humans and monkeys, and concludes that one must have evolved from the other, while a scientist that does believe in a creator-God (Theist) sees those same similarities and concludes that they must have had the same creator. Why? It’s all about their world views! (via The Christian Post)
Came across a link on Google+ to a post to a Forbes article (via Greg Landrum) and thought I would post a link here. It’s a simple economic analysis of the costs of Large Pharma drug discovery. Very simple, money in vs. drugs out. There is however a lot of complexity behind the numbers, for example – quite a few of the drugs will have been licensed in, the transaction costs for these in-licensing events have probably been factored in, but what about all the other burnt capital in the biotech companies that supplied the in-licensed compounds – this will inflate the numbers further. Of course the majority of these costs are incurred on the failed projects, the wrong targets, the wrong compounds, or the wrong trials.
To put the AstraZeneca number of $11.8 billion per drug in some national context (equivalent to £7.5 billion) – this is almost 17 years of the entire BBRSC budget (£445 million in 2011), or only two drugs from the entire investment portfolio of the mighty assets of the Wellcome Trust (~£14 billion in 2011) – that’s right, not two drugs from their annual research budget, but two drugs by shutting down the investment fund and putting it all into drug discovery and development (at Astra Zeneca ROI levels).
Scary numbers, eh? Are public funding agencies up to the task? Do we really know what to do differently? There’s also a post on the same Forbes article on the In The Pipeline blog.
The problem is, that often times the person in question doesn’t realize they are wearing colored filters over their eyes. Francis Schaeffer, the indelible Christian philosopher of a generation ago, says this about the “low-info ‘voter'”:
“People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By ‘presuppositions’ we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic worldview, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People’s presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions. ‘As a man thinketh, so he is,’ is really profound. An individual is not just the product of the forces around him. He has a mind, an inner world. Then, having thought, a person can bring forth actions into the external world and thus influence it. People are apt to look at the outer theater of action, forgetting the actor who “lives in the mind” and who therefore is the true actor in the external world. The inner thought world determines the outward action. Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles. But people with more understanding realize that their presuppositions should be chosen after a careful consideration of what worldview is true. When all is done, when all the alternatives have been explored, ‘not many men are in the room’ — that is, although worldviews have many variations, there are not many basic worldviews or presuppositions.”
Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, pp. 19-20
The origins of his starting point ~ a self-perceived neutrality in political thought for instance ~ makes no difference. It is the outcome that matters! That points to the presupposition held, perceived [known] or not. And the outcome that puts thoughts into containers that produce language point to a view which is decidedly liberal. Perceived or not. My friend just does not have the tools at his disposal to see the “rose colored glasses” he wears.
And it comes from crappy documentaries about pop-culture has fallen in love with and HBO [a decidely leftist org] and others push on us. Documentaries about McDonalds, Wal-Mart, fracking, water bottles, health-care, Columbine, global warming, and yes, food.
Years of documentaries that people watch — WITHOUT watching documentaries or finding information to counter the [often times] lies and twisted facts that accompany such “films,” drive this societal influence. Really, they are modern day horror films, for the mushy mind. One reviewer puts it in “campy horror flick” terms:
I unlock this door with the key of trepidation. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of underground. A dimension of fright. A dimension of rewind. I’m moving into a land of shadow and more shadow, of bewilderingly dumb ideas. I just crossed over into the Leawood Theatre.
We each have our personal Twilight Zone. Mine is here. In the basement theater of a half-century old strip mall in suburban Kansas City. Once well-attended, then abandoned to the wasteland of discount theater of the 80s, it suffered the final indignity of becoming a storage vault, only to be completely gutted and resurrected today to cinema status. As the double glass doors hiss shut behind me for the first time in 25 years, my soles suction one-by-one to a laminate floor, ashen as a corpse, decorated in accents the color of dirty snow to camouflage cracks, dirt, cockroaches and time. Past an old letter board, the mall tenants’ names leering like a toothless grin, errant and neglected grey letters drifted inevitably to the bottom like a neglected pile of autumn leaves. A hesitant descent down an open stairwell of gum-spotted teal ceramic tile and wood paneling of ebony contact paper dispels me at last into an echoing cavern of desolate shopfronts, save a solitary manned theatre ticket window.
The attendant slides forward my credit card and $6.50 receipt from the pool of shadow inside, in the process exposing the pale flesh of his forearm. His skin is a canvas, tattooed in a leering blue-green visage of a hunched vampire – Nosferatu, 1922’s first film fiend (who was eventually banished to the cinematic undead by the simple misfortune of being cast as the unpronounceable German counterpart when the studio couldn’t afford rights to the real Dracula of Bram Stoker.) Past the fraying scarlet rope and down a low-ceilinged hallway so narrow I have to turn sideways to maneuver past an exiting patron, I step finally into the cavernous blackness of 72 seats minus five occupied. And sit. Turns out, Leawood Theatre is the perfect place for me to see Food Inc.
A great article by the way, entitled, The Horror Show that Just Won’t Die. I find his encapsulating the masses as bright eyed, bubble gum chewing teenyboppers seeing for the first time the giant machine of the food industry, and being, surprised by it… but for all the wrong reasons:
The audience may take a bite, and because there is so much icing of factual inaccuracy, so many empty calories of cinematic wizadry, they won’t taste the unpalatable that lies beneath.
Agriculture’s response to those factual inaccuracies and open prejudice in Food Inc. has been predictable. Some of it’s been measured, calm and to the point. Some has been ham-handed, laggard and obscured by PR-eze. Typical of the fact-based response, the website SafeFoodInc.org, posted by an alliance of associations that represent the livestock, meat and poultry industries, complained “the makers of “Food, Inc.” and the subjects they interview seek to paint our industries as big, bad and mechanized. They seek to prove their point through a selective use of the facts. While the makers of “Food, Inc.” have the right to state their opinions, consumers and the media have the right to the facts.”
But the point Big Ag’s defenders appear to have missed, hiding behind the closet door as they rush like giggling teens into their factual defense of farming, is that Kenner et al’s attack on the factual integrity of agriculture is ultimately irrelevant. We’ve all been there, done that, lived to plow another day. What pass unnoticed are the deeper messages lying beneath Kenner’s factual surface, smooth and calm as an impending Camp Crystal Lake murder. It’s both fashionable and highly effective to position the food system as hopelessly and irretrievable broken, thus in need of complete reform and overhaul. And because consumers react with a guttural fear to an issue as personal as their food, it works—factual or not. But carried along in that message are the deeper fears Kenner’s selling—phobia of industrialization, consolidation, specialization, big corporations, even freedom and free-enterprise capitalism itself. It’s a story that comes, stake and hammer in hand, pretending to be hunting the lowly hunchback Igor of an unhealthy food system while in fact hoping to catch the Demon Prince of a heartless capitalist U.S. in a vulnerable slumber.
Food Inc. succeeds not by pulling back the veil on its own unpopular political inclinations, but by obscuring them behind the gee-whiz….
[….]
….Kenner and his servants deploy the shock of seeing the food system for the first time–shocking and amazing the innocents who don’t make it their job to think about it daily. It capitalizes on the modern urban pet owner’s inability to grasp the living scale of a 100,000-head capacity beef feedyard. It flash-frames the ungraspable idea of compressing the genetic manipulation of plants and animals farmers have pursued for centuries down into a week’s worth of laboratory work. It all makes for great show. But, ultimately robbed of any true underlying evil, it becomes Freddie vs. Jason or Alien vs. Predator …all gore and no fear, what Lady Gaga is to erotic cinema—overly costumed, predictable, empty, passionless and, finally, boring.
I use to go out of my way to see documentaries like this… but I noticed a “‘Moorian’ formula,” if-you-will. For instance, in Farenheit 9/11, one reviewer, Doc Farmer, talks about this:
A half-truth is the worst kind of lie…
…Michael Moore spends two tortuous hours spinning half-truths, supposition, perverted imaginings, and out-and-out lies across the screen, polluting the celluloid it inhabits, and the theater it pervades. Moore apparently was upset that his movie didn’t get a PG-13 rating so that kids could see it. Considering the ”liberal” use of the F-word in one segment of the film, and the horrific images of war interspersed with film of the high government officials in tie and tails, I would have given it an X.
Moore is a modern-day Leni Riefenstahl, with all the evil politics but without the talent. It is propaganda, (im)pure and simple(istic). Moore tugs at the heartstrings, makes racist comments about the enlistment practices of the military, and stands at a street corner like a Harkonnen baron without the suspensor units, accosting congressmen to have their children enlist and volunteer for Iraq. He posits his own form of neo-fascism, supporting his lib/dem/soc/commie brethren (who are far closer to the Nazi political structure than are the rep/cons), and dares to quote George Orwell in reference to George Bush, when it is Moore himself who is far more representative of the communist body politic.
And this is it, half-truths that “tug at heart-strings,” making these twisted views seem like they are the case, when they are not. So lets deal with some views that counter the outcome wanted from Food Inc.
Farming Land
The film goes far beyond even propaganda by making intentional misrepresentations, lies and distortions. The first example is a logical conclusion of an option presented in the film to raising chickens to sell on the market. The farming techniques of Joel Salatin, highlighted below… and their logical outcome:
“Food, Inc.” features Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farm in Virginia as a model of animal and crop production. Although Mr. Salatin’s methods are charming and offer a platform for his speaking business, they are not very practical when it comes to feeding several hundred of million people.
Mr. Salatin practices “pastured poultry.” He uses 50 portable wooden pens that hold about 70 chickens each, and his helpers move them ten feet each day – by hand — to a new patch of grass, for the 56 days it takes to grow them to market weight. The chickens nibble on grass and eat insects, although they still get commercial feed because chickens have limited ability to metabolize nutrients from grass. Their manure fertilizes the pasture. Nothing wrong with that. But this system produces only 10,000 broilers a year on 100 acres, in flocks of 3,500 birds. If the mainstream commercial chicken industry tried to raise its annual production of nine billion birds in a similar fashion, it would need 45 million acres! That’s more than all the farmland in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas – combined.
To wit, Dennis Avery talks about percentage of farmland vs. population and “High Yield Conservation” (HYC) vs. what organic farming can yield. It (HYC) conserves space and protects wildlife:
Continuing, Safe Food inc makes the point about the movement to return to older farming methods and how that will harm the land and ultimately starve the population:
Technical advances in genetics, production and processing have helped create a meat and poultry production system that today requires less feed to produce a pound of meat.
Advocates of the “slow food” model argue for a return to older and less efficient methods of production, believing that this food ultimately is healthier for people and the environment. Others disagree.
According to a 2008 Time Magazine article “a worldwide Slow Food initiative might lead to turning more forests into farmland. (To feed the U.S. alone with organic food, we’d need 40 million farmers, up from 1 million today.) In a recent editorial, FAO director-general Jacques Diouf pointed out that the world will need to double food production by 2050 and that to suggest organics can solve the challenge is ‘dangerously irresponsible.'”
“We should use organic agriculture and promote it,” Dr. Diouf said. “It produces wholesome, nutritious food and represents a growing source of income for developed and developing countries. But you cannot feed six billion people today and nine billion in 2050 without judicious use of chemical fertilizers.”
Now you see where the horror is misplaced that earlier, Truth in Food said Food Inc “follows in the footsteps of other modern campy horror flicks: Splashy, escapist and horrifyingfor all the wrong reasons“
Similarly, like environmentalists terrifying the masses about DDT, what was truly terrifying was that they killed millions of Africans with their unfounded fears. While environmentalists view their own concerns as noble, well-placed, wrought with good intentions. The outcome is what i am concerned with:
These are the people who coerced nations worldwide into banning DDT. It is generally estimated this ban has led to the deaths of about 50 million human beings, overwhelmingly African children, from malaria. DDT kills the mosquito that spreads malaria to human beings.
US News and World Report writer Carrie Lukas reported in 2010, “Fortunately, in September 2006, the World Health Organization announced a change in policy: It now recommends DDT for indoor use to fight malaria. The organization’s Dr. Anarfi Asamoa-Baah explained, ‘The scientific and programmatic evidence clearly supports this reassessment. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) is useful to quickly reduce the number of infections caused by malaria-carrying mosquitoes. IRS has proven to be just as cost effective as other malaria prevention measures and DDT presents no health risk when used properly.'”
Though Lukas blames environmentalists for tens of millions of deaths, she nevertheless describes environmentalists as “undoubtedly well-intentioned.”
This kind of helpful hand from “Big-Eco” or “Big-Gov”is what caused Reagan to say that the “nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'” C.S. Lewis years earlier said it more forcefully:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
Another misconception in the documentary is that chickens are genetically modified. They are not. Breeding is done the ol’ fashion way, by intelligent selection.
E.coli
Another issue I have with Food Inc. is the portrayal of Pigs grown indoors versus outdoors.
Some of these concerns I have are a twisting of the facts, and really, downright lies. The film mentioned that E. coli O157:H7 could be eliminated or reduced by feeding cattle grass instead of grain. The next question the viewer should have, is, “is this a true statement?” No, it is not. A large veterinary study shows that it exists naturally in the environment, and that hay- or frade-fed cattle have it as well. Studies do show some feeding regimens increase the risk, but these facilities spend multiple millions to excise their cattle of it.
Global Warming
Greenhouse gases are not the contributing factor to global warming. The major greenhouse gas that is demonized is CO2, and as we know, yes know, global warming gas ceased during the time of the biggest increase in this major greenhouse gas:
Obviously, Then, CO2 and Climate Are Not Connected…
Even the IPCC and British Meteorological Office now recognize that average global temperatures haven’t budged in almost 17 years. Little evidence suggests that sea level rise, storms, droughts, polar ice and temperatures or other weather and climate events and trends display any statistically significant difference from what Earth and mankind have experienced over the last 100-plus years…
It is unfortunate that people cannot connect the dots in this regards, that sunspots, and its energy is the driving force of climate.
Outdoor vs Indoor
Another glaring misrepresentation of facts by tugging on heart-strings in the documentary are the indoor facilities of to-market pig. Modern advancements has made safer, cleaner, and more humane conditions for these animals that are meant for going to market. One farmer explains his issue with Food Inc:
Another myth is that these ways of raising pigs is not healthy. For instance, Safe Food Inc points out that it has been proven that pigs produced in outdoor systems are in fact, carriers of serious disease causing organisms:
…particularly those raised antibiotic-free for niche markets may harbor parasites (such as Trichinella and Toxoplasma) that are not found in pigs produced in indoor systems. Likewise, the incidence of Salmonella infection in pigs produced in outdoor systems is shown to be higher. Researchers from Ohio State University have stated that these systems carry risks that “may lead to persistence of bacterial (Salmonella) pathogens and reemergence of parasites (such as Trichinella) of historical significance.”
More
Of course more can be said about this topic, but above are the beginnings of allowing a rational person to start a search, to “hold fast that which is good.”
“…don’t be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. Throw out anything tainted with evil.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21, The Message)
Last I checked, God can’t stomach liars (Proverbs 12:22a). It’s just that our culture doesn’t teach the masses to distinguish between something that is true, a lie, or somewhere in the middle. So people are walking around like “little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit” (Ephesians 4:14, HCSB). Fulfilling in some way what G.K. Chesterton said: “When a Man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.” Likewise, people
Raising one’s self-consciousness [awareness] about worldviews is an essential part of intellectual maturity…. The right eyeglasses can put the world into clearer focus, and the correct worldview can function in much the same way. When someone looks at the world from the perspective of the wrong worldview, the world won’t make much sense to him. Or what he thinks makes sense will, in fact, be wrong in important respects. Putting on the right conceptual scheme, that is, viewing the world through the correct worldview, can have important repercussions for the rest of the person’s understanding of events and ideas…. Instead of thinking of Christianity as a collection of theological bits and pieces to be believed or debated, we should approach our faith as a conceptual system, as a total world-and-life view.
Ronald H. Nash, Worldviews in Conflict: Choosing Christianity in a World of Ideas (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 9, 17-18, 19.
Our total worldview requires us to be thoughtful about all we undertake… even inane documentaries that surely cause those who mention them and recommend them in general conversation who do not know about worldviews to respond with (after reading this), it doesn’t matter anyways. Ahhh, but it does. Are you being molded by society, or are you affecting society?
